Genius at Work

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To move forward, society needs geniuses—those rare individuals whose flashes of insight and imagination change the way we live and see the world. Without the likes of Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, and Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce (inventors of the integrated circuit), we would not have telephones, cars, or computers—the defining innovations of the modern world. Individuals—not organizations—invented these amazing creations, and individuals recognized the opportunities presented by them.

Geniuses appear in many guises. Although traditionally associated with the arts and sciences, engineers, designers, analysts—even some managers—display genius. Yet for all their creative energy, they don’t always make the best employees, colleagues, or bosses. They are notoriously prickly people: They don’t suffer fools gladly. And they can be fiercely individualistic; often they are anti-team players. Moreover, the inner lives of geniuses can be surprisingly fragile. They frequently act with flamboyance—but inside, they can be deeply vulnerable. Despite these obstacles, working with and managing genius is precisely what companies must learn to do if they are to survive in the unforgiving, competitive environment of the twenty-first century.

To understand how a manager might approach the challenges of genius, senior editor Diane L. Coutu recently visited choreographer and dancer Mark Morris at his home in Manhattan. If anyone deserves the label of genius, it is Morris. At an age when most children are still trying to color within the lines, he was already choreographing dances. By 15, he had composed his first ballet. In 1980, he formed the Mark Morris Dance Group—a collection of often unconventional-looking dancers who, in 1988, were invited to become Belgium’s national dance company. There, Morris created some of modern dance’s most enduring works. When he returned to the United States in 1991, Morris was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship (popularly called the “genius grant”), and today the Mark Morris Dance Group is widely considered to be the most exciting company in the business.

In a three-hour conversation, Morris talked about the realities of living with genius—from the inside as well as the outside. Not only is Morris a genius of choreography in his own right but, since he works with live music, he must also manage the genius of sopranos and virtuoso conductors who collaborate with his dance group. In the following pages, Morris discusses the roots of creativity, the truth about prima donnas, and the dangers of living with mediocrity. In doing so, he helps unlock the mysterious world of genius.

You’ve been called the most inventive choreographer in the country. In fact, to many people, you’re the archetype of genius. How would somebody go about managing you?

Me? I don’t need a manager—I’m it. Of course, I have other people to do the things that I can’t—could never—do, like managing my money. Those people are geniuses at that. But so far as dance is concerned, it’s entirely mine. I’m a complete autocrat in my work. For example, when I’m working on a piece, I might occasionally say to a dancer, “I don’t know how to get you out of this bind, help me.” But they don’t make up the dance; I do. That’s the way it was when I was a young dancer: I tried not to make suggestions to other choreographers. And when I couldn’t help myself anymore, I left and founded my own company.

So what’s the best way to work with you?

You can’t be afraid of me, that’s the biggest thing. I hate people who shut down instead of debating with me because I’m famous or whatever. For example, since my company has grown so large, I meet regularly with all the dancers. And the last topic we cover is always complaints. I’ve had a couple of people say to me, “I don’t have any.” Well, that is one of my chief complaints. So I tell them, “It’s way more important that you cast aside your fear of me. I’m not necessarily going to be fair to you, because that’s not what it’s all about. I will be honest to the best of my ability, though I may yell at you—which has got nothing to do with whether or not I hate you. It’s not personal. But if you respond only out of fear of doing something wrong or getting in trouble, it’s not going to work between us. That doesn’t mean you have to fight with me all the time, but don’t be passive.”

How do geniuses approach work?

Well, the important thing about me is that I work very, very fast: I think fast; I choreograph quickly. Sometimes I choreograph as I am going along. And because I’m so fast, I can be impatient. I say things sooner than maybe I should. So I can hurt people’s feelings, though I don’t think I’m mean for meanness’s sake. If somebody says after class, “You really hurt my feelings when you said such-and-such” then I’m truly contrite. I explain that I was only trying to prove a point and didn’t mean to call her ugly and stupid. She just got in my field of vision. At other times, I scream and chase people around. They think I’m mad but, in fact, very few people in my company have ever seen me truly angry. You see, I’m pretty rational and fundamentally kind, although sometimes that kindness is camouflaged by bossiness. I’m very bossy. I suppose if I hadn’t been a choreographer, I would have been a conductor. Conductors are so much bossier than composers are.

What conductor would you have been?

Well, me—Maestro Morris, the great conductor! Or Bugs Bunny, maybe. He was a great conductor; just think, everybody knows classical music because of the genius of those cartoons. And don’t forget, it was Warner Brothers, not Disney, that created such memorable art.

Of course, Walt Disney was a genius, too, but he was an evil genius. His company is quite evil in the way it manipulates every story to have a happy ending. Still, I think Fantasia is the best choreography of the Nutcrackermusic ever produced—including mine and George Balanchine’s. There’s nothing like it in the world. Those fairies flying with the ice and the flowers falling into the water. It’s unbelievable—truly great. It’s so deep and beautiful.

And what keeps you from becoming an evil genius?

Primarily my two business associates, who couldn’t be more different from one another or from me. We’ve been together for more than 15 years now, and we work together unbelievably well. They take care of the scheduling and the fundraising—the business side of things. They love their work, and they love me. My dancers also keep me in check. If I say, “Do it again, pick her up,” and we haven’t had a break for two hours, a few people might turn to me and say, “No, damn it”; “I’m tired”; or “My mother just died.” And that’s fine with me. I much prefer opposition to everyone going along with what I say and then complaining afterwards that dancing is so hard. Of course dancing is hard. I know that. Everyone knows that. But you’ve got to speak up when you can’t take it anymore.

As a manager of artists, you must deal with a lot of prima donnas. What is that like?

No, no, no, no. “Prima donna” is a very specific term that really only means the number one woman in an opera. Of course, it’s come to mean someone who is flighty and irresponsible and demanding: a diva like soprano Kathy Battle who—rumor has it—calls her agent on her cell phone to tell him to call the driver of her car to ask him to turn off the air conditioning. Prima donnas certainly exist, but I don’t like the term at all because someone who’s truly artistic can’t be categorized so easily. And the truth is, I rarely allow so-called prima donnas in my dances. My dancers are very humble—they’re not creeps. So if they’re going crazy, it may be because they’ve been forced on the defensive about something.

Surely you manage other geniuses and near geniuses?

Of course, particularly if I’m working with a fancy conductor or a soprano. And what I will tell you is that these people are up against their own egos; that’s why they’re so delicate or flamboyant or insecure. Those qualities all amount to the same thing: vulnerability. And vulnerability explains why exceptionally brilliant people, I believe, are all monsters in some way. Imagine, for instance, having to sing in front of 4,000 people a piece that everybody knows by heart, while the audience is just waiting for something to go wrong. That can make a person crazy. Of course, if you’re embarrassed to perform in front of people, you’re in the wrong job. But performing places you in a very exposed position, and working with great talent like this requires huge sensitivity.

Are you saying that managers should spend precious time bolstering the fragile egos of their exceptional people?

Yes, but not in an obvious way. You’ve got to guide these very talented individuals without actually intruding. In addition, you can’t be fake. There’s no use in saying something like, “You are so fabulous; you can do no wrong.” Such general praise might work with ordinary people, but that’s no way to manage a gifted artist. With them, you’ve got to be honest and say, “Hey, you were a little bit flat there, so let’s fix that.” Of course, nobody wants to tell a big star to crank things up, because he is such a big star. But the fact is, real artists or geniuses or whatever you want to call them especially need the truth. They’re not fooled by false praise and empty encouragement. Only honest recognition of their real accomplishment means anything to them at all.

“Nobody wants to tell a big star to crank things up, because he is such a big star. But the fact is, real artists or geniuses or whatever you want to call them especially need the truth. They’re not fooled by false praise and empty encouragement. Only honest recognition of their real accomplishment means anything to them at all.”

—Mark Morris

You’re known for creating intensely loyal teams. Is that why?

Yes, I think so. My dancers trust me because I try to give them what they need. For instance, we now have our own building in Brooklyn with our own studios and showers. That may be taken for granted in corporate America, but facilities like these don’t exist at all among dance companies.

But even though I try to do a lot for my company, I can also be a little paranoid, a little suspicious. I need to know as much as possible about everything that’s going on. If I find out that someone in my office did something in my name that I didn’t know about—even if that person was just trying to save me the bother—it really bugs me. It’s not that I’m desperately nosey, it’s just that I’m very sensitive to what is happening in my company. That’s one reason why I proofread everything that leaves my office: the newsletter, the brochures, everything. I have to. Imagine if something was sent out in my name that said, “to each their own.” I would go absolutely mad. Despite what people may say, I’m not ambitious in a competitive career sense. But I am totally ambitious in getting something right: I must have excellence.

A Master Class on Emotion

“One of the most important things I’ve learned in my work is that you don’t get emotional to communicate emotion. A fabulous mezzo-soprano friend of mine once told me that the last way to make people cry is to cry yourself. You can’t cry when you’re singing because you get all choked up and everything shuts down. Deep communication is not an emotional free-for-all.

That’s why I, personally, am opposed to the method school of acting, where actors are encouraged to immerse themselves in their feelings. I think self-expression is terribly overrated; I prefer communication. Of course, it may be fun for a three-year-old to spin and spin until she falls down, but it gets a little irritating if you’re the uncle watching. That’s not communication, it’s something else. The same is true of a lot of music, which is why most garage bands are still playing in garages.

A lot of people don’t understand that controlling emotion is an essential part of any performer’s bag of tricks. Here’s a beautiful example of what I mean. I was once in Tokyo and we were bumped from the plane and forced to spend the night near a mall at the outskirts of the city. One shop had a display of about 1,000 TVs for sale. On every one was the same image: a geisha crying with a handkerchief. I watched this picture for several minutes. I couldn’t believe how moving it was, this woman painted white and crying. After a few minutes, the camera came in for a close-up, and I realized that the crying geisha was a puppet. It was a chunk of wood that a 75-year-old guy was manipulating. It made such an impression on me that I have never forgotten it. When it comes to emotion, you see, mastery—and not indulgence—is everything.”

Can geniuses be mentors? Are you a mentor?

My brilliant, beautiful ideas only exist when they are being executed by these fabulous dancers so, naturally, I try to bring people along. But please don’t use the word “mentor” because I hate it. I can encourage a dancer, and foster her, but she has to have her own motivation. If she isn’t wild about what she’s doing, then she ought to leave—or I suppose I ought to fire her.

Unfortunately I’m very, very bad at firing anyone; I wish I were better. But it’s a big enough company that if I’m sick to death of somebody, I can spend a couple of weeks not talking to him. When I spend all my time trying to avoid somebody, then I know it’s time for somebody to go—and that somebody is not going to be me.

Let’s talk more about the creative process. How do you know when something is right? When is it time to stop tinkering with your innovation?

It’s easy to start choreographing a dance, but it’s very, very difficult to finish it—and, by the way, the ending is usually not the last thing I make up. Still, it’s definitely not magic; it’s a decision. I know a piece is done when it has satisfied itself. By that I mean that the piece has achieved clarification for me. The easiest thing in the world to do in art—and I imagine this is true in business as well—is to make up something incredibly complicated and ornate and dense. It’s much harder to get something to the right level of simplification, with just exactly the right amount of information and effort so that it seems inevitable. When you create a sense of inevitability, you have succeeded in creating the illusion of spontaneity, and that’s what art is all about.

“Creativity” is the hottest buzzword in business today: Everybody wants to be creative, not just artists. Is something forced about this push for creativity?

Oh, it’s all so completely phony. Look at education: There’s this horrible homogenization going on—everybody has got to be special. So if it’s somebody’s birthday in grade school, then you have to celebrate everybody’s birthday, all year long. Everyone gets absolutely equal treatment; nobody is allowed to stick out—whether it’s because they are behaving badly or are brilliantly smart. Everyone has to be of equal value intellectually, artistically, and creatively; it makes me want to scream. There’s this irrepressible drive toward mediocrity; everything seems to be degenerating into a kind of middlebrow “world-class.” Singers like Charlotte Church, bless her little heart and love her, and Andrea Bocelli are important for popular culture. But come on, these people are not world-class singers, and they will never be. I’m sorry. The very designation “world-class” drives me nuts.

Do you think businesspeople can be creative?

They can, but it’s important to distinguish between creativity and art. The most common form of creativity is problem solving: You can’t get the truck through the tunnel, so you let the air out of the tires. I presume that business people are very good at this kind of creativity, which is also important in dance. If I keep running into you on stage, I have to figure out what I’m doing wrong.

By contrast, art depends on whether you can invent something from very little. That’s the way it is with me. I can make up a dance just by listening to music. I can invent an entire canon of works that didn’t exist before. Of course, skill and learning are also involved, but art goes beyond skill.

In the creative process, do you ever seek advice or feedback from other people?

I talk to my friends. But there’s a lot that I don’t talk about because it’s not word stuff, it’s dance stuff, and dance is communicated primarily nonverbally. Of course, on some pieces, my very, very close advisers and friends have said to me, “Mark, the ending is wrong. You’re cheating everybody.”

And then I really did think about what they said. A few times, I even tried another ending because of what I heard. But invariably the new ending was retarded in some way. For instance, everybody started laughing at a part that was so not funny to me. So even though I do listen to other people’s opinions, over the years, I have come to trust my own instincts more.

How much do you consider your audience when you make a dance?

A lot. After all, I’m in the entertainment business, and we are putting on a show. For me, dance is quintessentially a theater thing; we’re all about pretense. We dance wearing makeup and costumes. We try to please people. And yet, paradoxically, I know that if I try to make up something just to wow an audience, I’m doomed to fail. It just doesn’t work. Indeed, if I find myself trying too hard to tweak and adjust things in order to deliver a message to please a particular audience, then I know something is wrong. I don’t create a Protestant or a Catholic dance. I just do a dance—and let the audience take away from that whatever they want. There is a quotation I love that says, “My work isn’t for everyone, it’s for anyone.” That is so true for me.

What do you think accounts for your company’s success?

I think the reason we are so popular with audiences is we don’t lie or bluster. We don’t inflate ourselves. The dancers dance honestly—that’s the best thing I can say about them. Indeed, one of the things I scream about the most is “fake, fake, fake,” or “chicken, chicken, chicken.” I want the dancers to reach a level of authenticity that is surprising—not only to audiences but also to themselves. In the end, we have to mean what we’re doing or else it’s all worthless.

That’s the point about genius, really. It involves both skill and honesty. Consider Maria Callas, whom we all loved and adored even though she was singing so horribly flat half the time. Yet she had this terrific authenticity. Horowitz made lots of mistakes playing the piano, but it worked because it’s not about playing note perfect. That doesn’t mean that you have to be touchingly imperfect to be a genius, but you do have to be real. And that’s the essence of my company: We are real people who are incredibly skilled.

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